Sam Freedman
I’ve been at a number of events recently in which smart technocrats from top universities and think-tanks set out solutions to the varying problems of the British state. Followed immediately by more politically-minded attendees explaining why these ideas are all totally incompatible with ever winning an election again.
This is, of course, not a new problem. Policy thinkers have always despaired about the irrationalities of politics. If only we could get rid of those pesky voters we could fix everything (of course some countries have tried that too and it hasn’t worked out all that well).
But in recent years governments have been increasingly paralysed by the disconnect between what experts are telling them to do and what the public seem to want. Look across almost any policy area and you see the problem.
All of the big ideas for growth, many of which were helpfully listed for us in a guest post by John Kingman, risk deep unpopularity. NIMBYs and environmentalists will fight back against planning changes and big infrastructure projects. There’s no desire to reopen the Brexit arguments, even if Leavers are disappointed with the outcome to date. So that’s out.
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